


Like a Fool

by nikatsu



Category: DBSK | Tohoshinki | TVfXQ | TVXQ, 소녀시대 | Girls' Generation | SNSD
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:40:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23277226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nikatsu/pseuds/nikatsu
Summary: Shim Changmin is not stupid. But for tonight, he is.
Relationships: Im Yoona/Shim Changmin
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	Like a Fool

**Author's Note:**

> The long-overdue move to AO3 is finally here. Archiving all of my works so I'll always have them around. This was originally posted in [Livejournal](https://ichinori.livejournal.com/61830.html) on 2014-10-23.

If anything, Shim Changmin is not stupid. He’s made mistakes now and again, usually at the expense of some moronic dare his friends would challenge him to do, but he’s always known to stop just when those brainless moments are about to topple over. He’s never let things go out of control. He’s always had good enough hold on himself to know when to say ‘No’ and walk away.

Except _tonight_ , he is. When Minho kicks and dares him to sing a song for someone special, Changmin doesn’t falter one bit. And despite not _actually_ being stupid, he admits that the second he goes up on stage for the company’s annual Karaoke night to sing _that song_ for _her_ … Shim Changmin **is** , without a doubt, a profound idiot with impeccably inappropriate timing.

The song is simple enough. The opening bars starting slow and picking up just enough speed to convey the right emotions for the words. Not a lot of those in the audience understands, but the melody is beautiful enough to distract from its actual meaning. He expectedly stumbles on some of the words but other than that it goes on without a hitch, without interruption or delay. Everyone is happy and entertained, and if anyone had noticed anything wrong, no one important came to mention it to him.

He finished the song and let the applause carry him back to his seat, and he knew it was a mistake. Because his eyes had stayed with her all throughout and she had stared back. Because while he never specifically dedicated the song to anyone, she had had to have known that it was for her. And if Changmin knew Im Yoona at all, he knew to expect her to come to him and demand an explanation after.

After all, everyone knows you’re not supposed to pine for someone who was never yours to begin with.

And isn’t it just his luck the on the very moment he decides to openly pine, the girl he’s always wanted and _almost_ had would be the same girl who gave up and walked into the arms of someone else?

The party’s still raging on when she finally goes to where he’s brooding, out on the balcony. Changmin doesn’t have to turn around to know that her arms would be folded across her chest, both hands gripping opposite elbows. Her face pinched as she shifted her weight between her feet, swaying slightly as she speaks with as much determination as she could muster.

“You really are an asshole, aren’t you?”

Changmin waits a beat, taking a long, hearty sip from his soju bottle before responding. “Yeah.”

She scoffs loudly, disbelieving as she stands by his side. There’s a bite to her tone but he can tell her hands are shaking, “And as always you’re fucking vague.”

“That’s me,” he quips because he doesn’t know what to say. He never does now with her. “The king of vague. Someone should really erect a statue in my honor. Monosyllabic men all around would come to worship it nightly.”

Changmin expects a rebuff or at least physical violence for his words. Because that’s how Yoona usually responds but it seems like it isn’t just him who’s changed routines. Instead he waits and stands in silence with her, noting every deep breath she takes to calm herself, every tremble her hands make, every drop of moisture she seems to resolutely stop from forming completely from her eyes… he waits and takes it all in until she finally breaks the quiet.

“You don’t get to do this to me again, Changmin.”

Parts of him break at her words because he knows the weight they hold between them.

“What possible reason could you have to sing me that song? To sing to me any song for that matter after last year!” She continues, waving her hands about and working herself up into a frenzy. Her breathing is sped up and the tears are more evident now in her eyes than before and it’s made even more abundantly clear that what he did was a mistake.

“It’s just a song.” He says and even knows it’s not at all convincing.

“It’s not _just a song_ and you know it!”

Yoona wraps her arms around herself again, lowering her head to heave a long, shaky breath. “ _You_ told me not to wait, remember? You looked me in the eye and said it wouldn’t work. That it _couldn’t possibly_ work. _You_ told me to move on. So tell me, Changmin, what possible reason could you have to almost let me believe that you—”

He wants to speak but can’t find the words because he knows that none of them would be enough to make things right. He knows because they had had their moment and he had let it pass them by. He may have held on but he got out _first_ before she did.

Yoona whips her head away, and lets out a short, sad, trembling laugh. “You know what? It’s already been a year and I’m dating someone else. Nothing really happened between us anyway so what’s the problem, right?” She wipes at her eyes and sniffles, pursing her lips as one of her hands move to half-heartedly pat him on the shoulder. The weight of her hand chills him to the bone, breaking whatever’s left of him into dust.

“It doesn’t even matter anymore.”

Yoona leaves before he can even think to move, though it’s not like he could have said anything that he _should have said before_. He leans over the railing in front of him, his knuckles white and shaking. He doesn’t move until someone calls him back in and when he does, all he can do is breathe as his eyes catches sight of her leaving with another man’s hand in her own.

“It matters.” He mutters to himself but it’s too little, too late.

Changmin is not stupid. But when it comes to Yoona he is.


End file.
